


and thus it begins

by ryvrr



Series: Until Dawn Paranormal Investigations [1]
Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Ghost Hunters, Friendship, Gen, Pre- MattHannah, Pre- MikeJessEmily, Pre-Climbing Class, Pre-MattHannahAshley, Pre-Sath, pre-relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-02
Updated: 2016-03-02
Packaged: 2018-05-24 07:33:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6146234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryvrr/pseuds/ryvrr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chris brought up, "I think it'd be fun to go hunt ghosts," and everyone was super on board, somehow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and thus it begins

**Author's Note:**

> This got away from me, oops. Also, there is a LOT that won't be brought over to AO3 (such as drabbles, questions people are free to ask me on my Tumblr, etc), but you can find it [HERE](http://mynxwrites.tumblr.com/tagged/until-dawn-paranormal-investigations-au) on my fanfiction tumblr.
> 
> This hasn't been beta'd! It was just slapped together because of an ask I received. Enjoy! There will be plenty more~

So this is how it goes down:

Literally _everyone_ knows that Chris is a huge nerd. It’s not a secret at all. He loves reading about the weirdest shit on his phone. They’ll all be hanging out together, and he’ll just be tinkering away on his phone, furiously typing shit out and reading and just being a blatant nerd.

So one day Chris looks up and announces, “Did you know that abandoned Rancho Los Amigos Hospital is haunted?”

Everyone ground to a halt. Sam had been attempting to beat Beth in Mario Kart. They’d all been having a huge competition, and everyone else had been disqualified. It was down between just them now, but everyone stopped what they were doing– Sam and Beth paused the game, set down the controllers, everyone else stopped watching and cheering– to look at Chris.

“Uhm, yeah,” Ashley replied first, because no one else seemed to be of the mind to answer. “I’ve heard about that!”  


Josh already has that glint in his eyes, the one he gets when he latches onto something and is fascinated by it. “What about it?” he asks his best friend. He leans forward, slides right up next to him and tilts his head to read over Chris’ shoulder.

“Well, I was just–” Chris trails off, looks at his phone again, glances at Josh and then back at everyone else who’s still looking at him. “I don’t know, I’d been thinking it’d be interesting to, uh, go explore it? Or something.”  


“Isn’t it guarded?” Matt asks from his perch on the recliner in a corner of the room. He looks interested enough. Actually, _everyone_ at least looks like they’re not bored at the thought.   


“Sure, but–” Chris pushes a few links in his phone and confirms what he knew he read earlier. “Yeah, there are people who say it’s really easy to sneak in and explore. We just have to dodge around some of the guards, you know, and then we’re golden.”  


“Huh,” Jess said. She looked off into the distance and furrowed her brows. “Well,” she announced and clapped her hands together– loud, loud enough to make everyone jump a little– and grinned. “Let’s do it!”  


“Right now?” Hannah looked a bit nervous as she glanced at everyone and then at Chris. “Like, right this instant?”  


“Why not?” Emily asked. She got to her feet and flicked her hair over her shoulder, started toward the door. “Might as well. Unless you’re all pussies.” She glanced over her shoulder and cocked a brow.  


Jess jumped to her feet and bounced on the balls of her feet, excitement clear in her expression. “Yes!” She pumped her feet in the air and raced after Emily. “Let’s do this, Em! We’re gonna kick ghost butt!” The blonde tucked her arm through Emily’s and steered her toward the exit of the den they’d all been chilling in.

“We’re gonna need a camera,” Josh muttered to himself as he got up. He pushed himself away from Chris and hurried out of the room, muttering other things he needed as he went. Chris watched him go with a small smile. Well, he hadn’t actually thought so many people would pipe up in agreement, but– this would be fun!  


“Come on!” Sam yelled and grabbed his arm, hauled him to his feet and patted him on the shoulder. “This was your idea, genius! Let’s do this!”  


Ashley gave him a tiny smile and folded her arms across her chest. “Hopefully it’s not _too_  scary…”

“We can stay out in the cars,” Hannah assured her as she practically glued herself to the smaller girl’s side. Ashley smiled up at her and nodded.  


“Good idea,” she agreed. “I don’t think I’d do very well with ghosts and ghoulies.”  


“No ghouls,” Chris assured her as they headed towards the front door. “Just ghosts. Apparitions, some people say, so we don’t have to worry about weird monsters chasing us.”  


“Thank goodness for small miracles,” Hannah muttered.  


“Sam!” Beth said and slung her arm around the blonde’s shoulders. “I bet you I’ll find a ghost before you do.”  


“Yeah, right!” Sam laughed. “You’re on!”  


It took twenty minutes to gather everyone together again and figure out how they were going to do this. Josh had gone and gotten his nicer camera to record things, and Hannah had volunteered to use her phone– which had better quality than everyone else’s– to also record. Mike had taken his mom’s minivan to Josh’s place, so that meant everyone could pile into it so they’d only have to take one car.

“Damn,” Matt breathed as they pulled up. The place was _huge_. Sam was the smart one and had went to grab some flashlights. “We better freaking be careful, guys, we could get lost out here.”  


“Good idea,” Ashley agreed. She sounded even more nervous now. Chris patted her on the shoulder and smiled.  


“Why don’t you stay out here with Hannah?” Chris suggested.  


“I’ll stay with you,” Matt volunteered. “You know, so you both don’t have to worry about not having a guy around.”  


“We wouldn’t,” Hannah told him, but there was no malice behind it. “But thanks. Safety in numbers.”  


Everyone else headed off. There were some security guards, but it was easy enough to evade them. Josh– who’d been kind of down the last week, having wrapped up his last video project– seemed to be completely in his element. He pushed people around and told them where to stand, hushed people when he thought he heard something, and commanded who would carry the flashlights and who would take the lead.

Mike, of course, was one of the leaders, along with Sam. Sam held a flashlight while Mike held an audio recorder. Chris had no idea where Josh had found it, but he’d procured it before they left and shoved it into his pocket for the car ride. “So we just, like, talk to some ghosts and record to see if they respond?” Emily asked as she tagged along behind Chris, with Jess glued to his side.

“Pretty much,” Chris replied. “I’ve seen some Ghost Hunters and shit. That’s pretty much what they do? They just kind of… ask questions and stuff. Ghost Adventures is the one where they’re kind of aggressive and try to _fight_  the ghosts.”  


Jess snickered. “Fight them?”

“Yeah!” Chris enthused. He loved watching the episodes, to be honest, and he never missed one. “They, like, say things on purpose in hopes of inciting anger from the paranormal.”  


“Shhh!” Beth hissed. They’d finally reached the mental ward they’d all agreed they’d sneak into. It was pitch black inside and Chris felt his first tendril of fear. You could barely see a few inches in front of your face once you stepped inside. Thankfully Chris also had a flashlight, so he used that to swipe the light around the room, check out all the deep corners.  


“Is anyone here?” Jess asked. She’d gone to stand next to Mike, who held the recorder aloft. Everyone remained hushed as they strained their ears to listen. Chris _thought_  he heard something, off in another room down a hallway. He turned toward it and blasted it with the flashlight, but nothing caught his eye. 

“This would be better if we had some better equipment,” Josh muttered to himself. “I’ll have to look into some better, heavy duty cameras.”

Beth shot him a look. “You will, huh?”

Josh flashed her a grin. “Totally. This could be a neat thing to do on the weekends or something!”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “It would be pretty cool. This is all really thrilling.”  


Sam bumped her shoulder against Beth’s. “I’d be down! Let’s do this more often. Go hunting all the paranormal sites around town.”

“Hey!” Jess hissed. “Hush! I think I heard something!”  


Mike raised the EVP higher up in the air and glanced around. They started to head toward the hallway, where Chris had heard that noise earlier. Or… where he’d _thought_  he heard it. Mike looked like he’d heard something too. Chris held his breath and strained his ears harder in hopes of picking something up.

“Is someone here?” Sam asked. She spoke clearly and made sure to stick next to Mike as they walked down the hall. “Any former patients still present?”  


There was _definitely_  a sound from that room Chris had noticed down the hall earlier! It sounded like something had fallen over. “What’s that?” Emily whispered through clenched teeth. 

“A ghost!” Jess excitedly replied. “It totally was!”  


Another sound came, louder than the first. Chris jumped almost a foot into the air. Josh swung around to make sure to get his reactions on camera. “You alright, Cochise?” he asked, his voice amused. “This was your idea, remember?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Chris grumbled. He stared with wide eyes into the room they’d finally reached and glanced around wildly. Nothing _looked_  out of place… no, wait– “Look!” He said and pointed. One of the old chairs next to a desk had fallen over. There was a mark in the dust that showed it had moved an inch or two from its original spot too. 

“Shit,” Emily said. Chris glanced at her to find her eyes were just as wide as his. “Holy _shit_!”  


“That totally happened,” Jess murmured excitedly. “Oh my God, there are _ghosts_  here!”  


There came another noise, this time from out in the hallway. Jess made a half shriek, half startled whimper and jumped away from the entryway. Mike raced into the hall with Josh hot on his heels. Beth– with Hannah’s phone recording– followed along at a more sedate pace so she could watch the rest of them filter out.  


“Dude,” Mike said just as the others caught up. “ _Dude_.”  


Josh looked a little blown away too. His mouth had dropped open and he was staring off down the hall, eyes huge in his suddenly pale face. “Fuck,” he said eloquently.

“You saw that too, right?”  


“Saw what?” Chris asked. He went to stand next to Josh and placed his hand on his shoulder.   


“There was a _ghost_ ,” Josh wheezed. He turned his eyes on Chris and grinned, suddenly super excited. “Dude, there was a _ghost_ , right there, down the hallway, just standing there! It was– fuck, did I get it on tape!?” Josh fumbled with the camera and turned it around in his hands.

“Don’t look yet!” Beth said and smacked his hands lightly. “We gotta keep recording–”  


“Let’s go for now,” Emily announced. She didn’t seem as excited as she had been in the beginning. “I… yeah, I think I’ve gotten my fill for tonight.”  


“Y-yeah…” Jess agreed. “Let’s get back to the others.”  


They all went back the way they’d come, Chris holding open the door at the end so everyone could file out. He looked one last time inside of the building and thought– for a moment, just _one_  moment– that he saw someone disappear around a corner into another room. He blinked a few times and then shook his head to clear his thoughts. He rushed after the others, who hadn’t stopped to make sure he’d continued to follow.

“Did anything happen?” Matt asked as soon as they got back to the van.   


“We did!” Jess replied. Apparently she’d taken the time walking back to get excited all over again. “Josh might have even gotten one on camera!”  


“No one’s ever gonna believe me,” Josh muttered. They clambered into the van and Mike started it up. They pulled away and, thankfully, had never been caught by any security once. Chris felt like that was a pretty good start to their paranormal activities, if this was going to be a weekly thing now.  


“They’ll believe you if you got it on tape!” Ashley told him. She leaned over to watch as he rewound through the footage. They watched it together, heads bent, and the tinny sounds of the audio echoed around the car. “Oh my God!” Ashley cried out toward the end of it. “I–”

“You saw that, right!?” Josh asked. Chris leaned forward to peer over his shoulder. The older Washington sibling rewound to watch that moment again. Josh and Mike had been right. There had _definitely_ been someone there, though it’d only appeared for maybe two seconds and had been semi-transparent. You could barely see it if you hadn’t known it would show up around that time. It was pretty much there and then gone in the blink of an eye.  


“Fuck,” Chris muttered. When he’d suggested they do this, he figured it would just be an adrenaline high or something. They’d never actually _find_  something. Now he was starting to believe all those videos people had caught on tape of other ghostly encounters. Maybe they _weren’t_  just effects and CGI…  


“Let’s do it again!” Jess cheered from her seat.  


Emily groaned. “This is gonna become a _thing_ , isn’t it?”

“I thought you were one of the first ones who wanted to go,” Matt pointed out.  


“Yeah! One time! I didn’t think– oh, whatever, sure. Let’s do it. Jess wants to do it, so we’re doing it.” Jess leaned over and hugged her best friend, giggling.

“You two are disgusting,” Beth commented blandly. Emily flipped her off.

Chris, himself, felt excitement and the thrill of the next hunt start up inside of him. “I’ll research some more places we can go,” he told the group in general.

“I’m going to get some better equipment before next time,” Josh muttered as he kept rewatching that part in the video. “We definitely need some awesome freaking stuff, guys.”  


“Agreed,” Sam said.  


And that, friends, was how _Until Dawn Paranormal Investigations_  began.


End file.
